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And on the opposite side--send out a signal that authorizes any weapon!

If the authentication takes place only within the watch, then the weapon's mechanism is just looking for an arming signal--probably something simple--and you could mass jam or arm weapons with a strong enough transmitter (I'm thinking of those shopping-cart brake systems that people have been pranking...). Heck, you can even get your own watch, put in your own pin, and steal any weapon and it will work!

OTOH, if the weapons' system is tied to a specific watch, then the failure rate will be through the roof! And, of course, you can disarm everyone easily because the systems are so strict.

As an aside, this would make locating weapons extremely easy--all you have to do is walk around with an RF scanner, searching for watch and/or weapons signals.

I see a big market for jammers, spoofers, RF scanners, and a multitude of other mini-electronic RF products. I better go take some spectrum-analysis classes soon.

what if, instead, the gun isn't just listening but also the transmitter making the watch is a passive RFID tag? you could still steal the data much the same way passport rfid collection works, but the likelihood of knowing which tag to use within the short time you disarmed someone and tried to use their weapon against them is unlikely. I don't see much civillian or military use for this. When I need a weapon to fire it needs to be as simple and straight forward as possible. One of my home defense pistols is a.357 revolver simply because there is so little that can possibly go wrong with them.

I do see this being marketed to police who have the highest risk of having their service weapon taken and used on them. I'm not so sure about the whole watch/pin-code concept though. Most people are right handed and wear their watches on their left hand. 20cm is not an overly large distance and while 2-handed shooting is more accurate, there could be cases where the officer has to shoot 1-handed. If they used a passive RFID, maybe fingerless gloves or, if possible, sub-dermal implant would make more sense.
I bet these designers got their idea from the 1995 Judge Dredd movie where the gun was bound to the owners DNA

There is no way in hell any law enforcement or military organization would ever go for this!

While I can see why the gun banners want this, I can not see why anyone would want one for themselves. I get disabled and can not hand my gun to my wife to defend us? I have to sleep with my watch on, and gun within 20cm, or type in a pin in groggy half sleep? My "watch" battery goes dead?

While I can see why the gun banners want this, I can not see why anyone would want one for themselves. I get disabled and can not hand my gun to my wife to defend us? I have to sleep with my watch on, and gun within 20cm, or type in a pin in groggy half sleep? My "watch" battery goes dead?

Hmmm...

Lets analyse this shall we.
So you're asleep,
We can assume the assailant has already gained access to your house. Is already in your bedroom all whilst you are asleep. Now in a self admitted state of groggin

Why should we assume that? A lot of people will wake up while hearing someone in the middle of trying to gain access to their house. There's a brief period of time between hearing some glass break, or a screen being cut, etc., and being able to arm yourself. That time has to be a lot longer if you have to fiddle with your magic wristwatch, and make sure that it never gets farther from your gun than eight inches from it. It would be a shame, wouldn't it, if you had to put the gun in your other hand while you grabbed your phone to dial 911, or reached for a lightswitch or flashlight or to restrain a dog, and had your gun disable itself. What an absurd thing.

With a regular firearm, in your scenario you are already screwed.

Sure, not counting all of the times that people in home invasions are not screwed, and are in fact saved because they reached for a gun. Not counting the number of people who simply turn and run when someone brandishes a gun, or who are held at gunpoint until the cops arrive. We slowed down a crazy guy trying to breack through our back door in the middle of the night, and did so by quickly displaying a gun. Still took the cops a long time to show up... and he would have been through that glass and into the house if not for even his drug-addled brain recognizing the deterrent being showed to him at 3:00AM. I'm very glad that no magic battery-powered wrist transmitter was required. I would never rely on such a device. It's crazy.

I have to sleep with my watch on, and gun within 20cm, or type in a pin in groggy half sleep?

Compared to just picking up your gun and pointing it at someone in a groggy state?

You are more likely to be shot if you own a gun, and that's just talking about you, the gun owner. How about your hapless wife or child who happens to be sneaking around trying not to wake you in "your groggy state", in which you want to become instantly fully armed.

Frankly, I think the idea that you have to pass some sort of non-groggy-state test before your gun enables is a damn fine idea.

Well, I gotta hand it to you; you guys nailed pretty much everything wrong with this idea in the first three posts. The only people who could love this idea are liberal gun grabbers who are afraid somebody might get hurt with a gun. The idea that it would be good for police is equally silly - the added layer of complexity can only further muddy the waters at times when speed and reliability are paramount. I already mourn for the police officer who will be killed when this system fails.

Guns aren't supposed to be safe, they're supposed to be dangerous as hell and for a very good reason. The entire mindset that spawned this abortion ignores the most basic natural right to self defense. Said mindset also has an unconscionably low opinion of people's judgments in such situations. It's the same mindset that recommends "passive resistance" for rape victims, as if a woman lying dead in an alley, raped and strangles with her own pantyhose is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to a cop exactly why she had to shoot her attacker.

Let's look at actual implementation, when Washington DC implemented its recently overturned strict gun laws, violent crime rates rose. The same is true of other localities. When states have passed laws making it easy for anyone without a criminal record to get concealed carry permits, violent crime rates fell.

They are busy legislating away all forms of self defense.I've seen several news reports of guys getting arrested because, oh noez! they fought back against their attacker. Many of them used a knife or other household item to save their own or a family members life, only to be incarcerated later. There was even one report of a military vet who found a shotgun in a park or something. He turn it in to the cops and was arrested for illegal possession. Now keep in mind that the police station he took it to had passed out flyers a short while before telling citizens it was their duty to bring any illegal weapons they find to the police.

And yet, for some reason, living in Britain I feel perfectly safe at home alone without a gun. I feel perfectly safe walking down dark streets alone without any kind of weapon at all. Even the police don't bother to carry lethal weapons unless they are actually responding to a specific incident which requires it.

Turns out that when guns are outlawed, outlaws don't need them either.

In Britain you are allowed to use reasonable force to defend yourself and your family and property from attack; and the important part is that it must only be reasonable to you at the time of using that force. If in the cold light of day it might seem unreasonable, if you thought it was reasonable (and can get a jury to agree with you that you thought it was reasonable) then you should not be found guilty.

The problem comes when someone uses clearly unreasonable force, then they cannot claim self-defence. In the case that has recently been in the news, the householder, once he'd driven off the attackers went on to chase them down the street and when he caught them he smashed a cricket bat over his head inflicting permanent injury on him. Pursuing an attacker once the threat to yourself and family is clearly over is no longer self-defence.

From what I heard of the case, I would agree that he went beyond the use of reasonable force to defend himself and his family and so should not have been able to use the self-defence defence. However, I do agree with the appeal judge also that this was an exceptional situation and given the extreme provocation of the attackers, he should not be significantly punished for going beyond self-defence.

The main debate in Britain at the moment is whether the law should be changed so that people won't be guilty if they go beyond "reasonable" force; only if they use "grossly disproportionate" force. If this proposal from the Tory's gets into law then it will be legal to use unreasonble force to defend yourself, and legal to use disproportionate force to defend yourself. Personally I like the term the reasonable force - there haven't been any cases that I heard of in Britain where someone used anything like reasonable force in their defence where they've been convicted, so to me it feels like the law is working as it stands (but then I'm not a Daily Mail reader who thinks it should be justifiable to kill someone who has trespassed on your property).

This [guardian.co.uk] was in the news recently, probably what a lot of people are vaguely thinking of. I remember reading a few different reports over a couple of days, and the story changed a lot with who was spinning it.

The Guardian report above seems to be on the he-was-just-defending-his-family angle; the other side I remember is that the defender and one of his mates chased down a fleeing burglar, beat him with a cricket bat, broke the bat from beating him too much, beat him some more after he was unconscious and left

> Pursuing an attacker once the threat to yourself and family is clearly over is no longer self-defence.

Right, because having been chased once, criminals immediately become law-abiding citizens. No chance at all that they guy was running away to get some more buddies to come back and finish the job. I have no problem at all with someone who wants to ensure that crooks are available for the police to deal with.

Oh dear, a criminal getting a "permanent injury" from a victim. My heart is bleeding for him. Du

It might me a small sample size and anecdotal evidence, but I have had many neighbors over the years and in that time, the collective number of homicides committed by every person I've ever lived nearby.. is less than the number of people killed by Ted Kennedy. Senators are far more dangerous.

I'd suggest you not even try to find any info on your last question, that's worded almost exactly like some of the shit put out by the antigun lobbies and they use so much bad reasoning in those things.. I'd cite an

Gun enthusiasts who keep guns in the house teach their kids about guns. Conservatives or not.

Note, IMO, darwinistic outliers that do meth, pop out the occasional sickly underweight baby, and keep a few AK47s are not proof of violations of the rule. Some people are simply so screwed up that they don't follow any standards of practice.

Maybe it should be "Gun enthusiasts who keep guns in the house and care about their kids, teach their kids about guns."

Gun enthusiasts who keep guns in the house teach their kids about guns. Conservatives or not.

No doubt. But kids are known for doing stupid things, even when they have been carefully told not to. Given that, I don't see anything wrong (at least in principle) with a gun that can only be fired by its owner, and won't fire for anyone else.

The idea is that the PIN will be entered when the watch is put on. Then you can put the gun where you can quickly get it, knowing that your kids can't use it even if they find it. Obviously the watch should disable itself when the wrist band is opened or torn. I'd worry about the battery life: What good is a gun that you can't use when you need it?

No, when the gun comes within 20cm of the "armed" watch, then it is automatically armed as well. When the watch is not "armed" (PIN not entered after putting it on) or the gun is not within 20cm of the watch, then the gun is locked. You don't have to enter the PIN whenever the gun comes within range of the watch.

At 20cm the average person WILL move their hand/watch past the authentication range. Will they need re-authentication.The gun will fire if the attacker has twisted the gun to face the victim because the watch is within range.The victim will need to fire with their off-hand because they used their good arm to defend against the initial attack. (This happened recently here.) The gun will not fire because it isn't close enough to the watch.

This setup is a recipe for disaster. In the name of safety, we will give up everything that gives us a chance against the bad guys.

All fine points. And don't forget that it's only a.22. One would need to achieve a series of headshots to effectively stop a violent criminal actor. Center of mass with a.22 won't stop a violent actor intent on killing you. And at the 7000 euro price point, they're not going to sell many of these except to maybe a few government agencies or people with more money than brains.

I understand slashdot is full of people with different backgrounds, but it becomes easily apparent when people get outside of what they're comfortable with.

A.22 is a very very useless hand to hand weapon and I don't know of any law enforcement in the world that would use the gun powder equivalent of a pea shooter. Unless you get a Boom Headshot.

There was an article a while back on how US soldiers were picking up and using the AK-47 and using them. One reason was most US guns use the Nato.223, which tops out at 4.1g the AK-47 uses a round that tops out at 10g (.22 tops out at g, 9mm at 9.5). People would keep coming after the first shot. Now if I have a suicide bomber running straight for me I want something that I know will make him stop.

For hunting they're mainly used for squirrels and the such. People hunting larger game go for larger guns.

The other being that our guns were in such tight tolerance that in the field they had great range and accuracy... if you kept them clean. The AK-47 could be buried in a pile of sand. picked up, brushed off and fired.

*And the awesome 30-06 topped out at 14g. And you knew it. I spent an entire day shooting nothing but that at a friends once. The next day I had a palm sized bruise in on my shoulder. Oh but it was fun.

No Soldier, Sailor, or Marine I've ever known "picks up an AK-47" to use.

There is absolutely no advantage to using an AK-47 over an M4 or M16 -- in fact there are significant disadvantages. Logistics is one -- where are you going to get ammunition for your battlefield pickup AK? Are you going to pick up some old left-over 1970's ammo the bad guys use? Ball ammo that doesn't fragment like XM-193 does, nor penetrate like M855 or SS109 does? Also, the legal jeopardy a person who did that unnecessarily would put themselves in would be an issue as well.

The M4 actually has a dust cover -- wonder why? It's so that dirt and sand don't get in the action. The AK has none of that -- and will certainly fail if it has sand and dirt dumped into it. Either weapon will fail if dirt and sand get into the action.

The weight of the bullet has very little to do with the performance of the bullet against the human body -- trust me, you'd far rather be hit by an old 7.62x39 ball round than a modern XM193, SS109, or 77 grain TAP round in 5.56 (any of which will cut right through IIIA body armor, while 7.62x39 will not).

And btw -- there's no such thing as "Nato 223" -- the spec is 5.56x45 NATO, and there is a significant difference between.223 and 5.56 -- such that firing 5.56 ammo from a weapon chambered in.223 may result in the weapon failing. The diameter of the bullet is the same (.224"), but the chamber specifications are different.

Ironically, you posted that people get outside their comfort zone, then you posted outside your realm of knowledge.The one thing you did get right is that.22LR is not generally considered adequate for a self-defense round.

In addition, the NATO round was designed off of the.223. It's like saying that Ubuntu isn't Debian because some of the packages won't work in it..223 is a whole lot faster to write out and that's how it was originally designed.

No -- if you put a 5.56 round into a.223 chambered weapon, you run the risk of blowing up the weapon. The chamber specs are different.

The bullet is the same diameter (.224"), but the chamber is different, which means it is dangerous to interchange them -- and incorrect to state that they are the same, which is why I called you on it.

Citing Wikipedia as an authoritative source on anything firearm related destroys your credibility, btw, as does all the other errors you made in your post.

Also: The US Army does not use the.223. We use 5.56mm. It's close and a.223 will fire a 5.56, but a 5.56 will not safely fire a.223 because the round is too light.

Wrong. The.223 and 5.56 case is close enough to ignore the difference. 5.56 cases may be built more thickly in certain areas to handle higher pressures, but on the outside they're dimensionally exactly the same.

The one important difference follows: the 5.56x45 chamber was designed to handle longer or heavier bullets, or bullets with more prono

The way I interpret it, once you punch in the pin on the watch the gun will work any time it's brought within 20cm of the watch until you turn the watch off. So even if you holster the weapon, when you bring it back out it's automatically "initiated"

Why not use a challenge response system that communicates with low voltage current that passes over the skin. Then you can disable the weapon the moment direct physical contact is lost. Of course you'd need to ensure the current was low enough that it didn't cause your trigger finger to spasm...

Because the reality is people don't want smart guns PERIOD. Every time you make a gun more complex it becomes more failure prone. The Glocks that almost all police departments use don't even have a safety on it period - because it's an extra point of failure and something to fiddle with. Just like code, a good gun should have SIMPLICITY, both in operation and in design, as a major design goal. Needless "safety" features and ESPECIALLY anything that depends on a battery are needless fluff. A nice semi-stiff double action trigger pull is a perfectly viable "safety" mechanism for 90% of shooters. For the other 10% they need nothing more than a simple manual safety.

People in this thread seems WAY to obsessed about the scenario which almost never plays out "someone tries to take my gun" vs the scenario that is all too common "children playing with their parents guns".

If it were "reasonably stored" as you say, then children would not be able to get their hands on it. Period.

You can get an in-wall gun safe that fits between the studs, has a quick code-release, will lockdown and alarm with more than 3 wrong code entries, and even presents the gun to you in a ready-to-fire orientation, for less than the price of most guns. And it has been around for many, many years.

I will agree that it doesn't negate the need to talk about gun safety with children, just like any other ki

And yet the most common firearm for police officers doesn't have an external safety. Glock pistols have some internal safety's that prevent mechanical failures or dropping it from causing the gun to fire, but there is no external mechanical safety. When you pull the trigger it fires, when you don't pull the trigger it doesn't fire. Exactly the way it should be.

All too common?? I think you have it fairly wrong. It is still not very common for a child to be killed by his own parents gun. Does that small number justify the expense of forcing every citizen to shell out 100X more for a weapon to defend themselves. Education is so much cheaper and way more effective.

Read the article... law enforcement is specifically exempt. This is because the technology is too unreliable for defense / offense, and sometimes people don't have time to enter a PIN or may need to shoot with their other hand. This is for you and me, so we're no longer effective at defending ourselves.

It's not a matter of not having a weapon; it's a matter of not having a significantly better, or at least equal, weapon than the criminals.

A weapon can be anything: your arms, a knife, a baseball bat. Chances are that violent thugs are going to come up-armed: they're going to have one or more of those things and/or a gun, and they're going to come in numbers greater than your own.

By having a gun, you greatly increase your own odds. You keep the enemy at greater-than-arm's-length, and you are reduced from being at their whims to being in control in your own home.

Every now and then you see about an armed robbery going horrifyingly right, with the criminals in question staining the homeowner's carpet. Not so often do you hear about a homeowner shot by criminals with their own gun - at least not that I have seen.

If I go target shooting I have to play "Pass the Wristwatch" to enjoy it as a communal activity and pay 10x as much for the privileged. If want to use it for self defense I have to wear the watch at all times and go through an extra layer of complications. Better yet in that situation if the gun is taken from me as we wrestle on the ground it's entirely likely that the gun will never move far enough to deactivate before I'm shot repeatedly in the chest and the watch and gun are taken.

Sounds like a lot of money to acquire a possibility of safety as well as making previously safe activities more complicated.

I had the same thought about the inconvenience for self-defense ("someone's out there - now let me put on the damn wristwatch...").

Then I figured it must be really good for law enforcement, where you already wear a lot of paraphernalia for the whole day. When I first read about the idea some years ago, the problem addressed was cops getting shot with their own guns.

I'm still curious how effective it will be given the close quarters nature of an officer having his gun taken in the first place, and just how many departments are willing to take up a system that could leave their officers with an expensive rock in their holsters potentially.

That said, $10,000 is an awfully expensive solution when most departments can get Glocks with a volume discount in the $300-400 range.

>and just how many departments are willing to take up a system that could leave their officers with an expensive rock in their holsters potentially.

Oh, but of course the POLICE, CIA, FBI, and MILITARY would be exempt! And, oh... the murderers and robbers and such would be exempt too, since they won't have to purchase legal guns like we law-abiding citizens do.

I am not anti-technology... I think such research is a GOOD idea. But wireless? No. Mandated by law???? No.

Well of course, if the gun can't be remotely disabled then it is safer to try and get it off them(gender-neutral singular them) as soon as possible.

In this case however, if they've got a hold of your gun then you can simply back off and then the attacker may attempt to shoot, before discovering that it's disabled and that will give the LEO an advantage.

It makes sense that police officers would behave differently with a weapon like this.

No. Fingerprint scanners are not reliable, and would be useless if you're wearing gloves.

I can actually see this for crowd control weapons, hostage negotiations, and other law enforcement firearms, where the gun would be activated as the officer goes on duty much as they'd release the safety when drawing their weapon.

Just what I needed, a gun that will stop working when the batteries run out (I suppose that will be the behavior). Anyway, I suppose that can be useful for prison guards and similar. Till the inmates learn to take the watch with the gun, of course.

Here is another interesting tech that would be very useful in some contexts, and scary in others.

Burris has built one of the most sophisticated rifle scopes we’ve ever seen. It has a laser rangefinder that can automatically adjust your sights to compensate for the fall of each bullet over long distances. Just point the crosshairs at the target, push a button on the side of the scope, and a bright red dot will show you exactly where the bullet will fall. We were able to easily hit targets at 400 and 700 meters without any experience at long-range rifle shooting.

More critical weaknesses - no accounting for muzzle velocity. At 500 yards, a bullet traveling at 4000 fps will not hit the same spot as one traveling at 3000 fps as it's not had time to fall as far. And of course, with any scope there are still the issues of wind and drift incurred by the barrel warming up over repeated shots.

Rubber bullets kill, too. In fact, cops shouldn't even be allowed to have them because the perception that they are "non-leathal" just encourages their use -- just like the beanbag rounds. There have been cases where the beanbags come out flat with the edges parallel to the ground, sort of like a frisbee and that the impact at that angle caused severe lacerations. People have died from those, too.

I'm not anti-gun -- I have many myself. I grew up around them, and I am completely comfortable with them. I also know that if I point a loaded gun with real bullets at a person, I better be absolutely willing to kill them when I pull the trigger. Cops and soldiers are trained to know this, too. But they seem to be more than willing to pop off rubber bullets and beanbags for "crowd control," and death has been a consequence a higher-than-zero number of times.

The last thing we need is Joe Bob getting ahold of them and shooting at cats, neighbours, or even robbers. You know all those times that burglars have sued property owners over getting hurt while they're there to rob them? Imagine the lawsuits over "he shot me with a rubber bullet, broke my rib, punctured my lung and now just look at me!" I also envision a slew of YouTube videos of drunk-ass morons popping their friends with these to see what it feels like.

There's already enough to horrify you on Youtube and Myspace with kids who like to play with Daddies Guns to put up badass pictures for their friends to see, and yet people still blame firearms when negligence happens. Every firearm I've ever purchased lays it out plane as day:

1) Know your target and what's behind it.
2) Assume every gun is loaded.3) Do not aim at or pull the trigger on anything you don't want to kill or destroy.

Looking at their page, it looks like the gun is armed by a fingerprint sensor on the watch, and disarmed when the gun moves away from the hand or after a timeout period. This makes the gun poor in most police and self defense scenarios; you now have to draw the weapon, and put your finger on the watch. Holster the gun for any reason and the gun disarms.

How about pricing it in Dollars and giving the measurements in Inches. That way us US customers (who is, after all, the apparent market) can actually buy and understand it.

BTW... I'll be damned if I'm going to use a gun that also makes me put on a watch. Imaging having to deal with that in the middle of the night when someone tries to break into your house. Let's see, can I use the watch on my left hand and have the gun in my right? 20cm... let's see... that 2.54 cm per inch, so 20 div... BAM... No,

Then go for a 12 gauge shotgun with bird shot. Perfect up to 10 meters, and yes, it can and does kill, even with less-than-perfect shot placement. At less than five meters, you have the same effect as a huge Glaser safety slug that upon impact, transforms from a solid bullet into a frangible one, for a fraction of the cost of that new-fangled bullet and it's legal everywhere where smooth-bore shotguns are legal (which might make it California, Ohio and New Jersey-legal).

As well as the fact that a.45 makes large holes that let in a lot of air and let out a lot of blood.

Long story involving a friend back in the '70s with a Class 3 FFL, I ended up with a chance to fire a Thompson 1928 (among a number of other weapons that day) at a hanging wild-hog carcass that weighed around 200 lbs. The entry points were just a bit bigger than the bullet (.45 ACP FMJ) however the exit wounds were anywhere from 2-1/2"/3" up to about 6" or a bit more that I attribute to how the bullet happened to tumble.

The bottom line was the thing was a mess after 2 or 3 rounds, and after the 5th and 6th, there just wasn't much left to hit except chunks hanging together even using FMJ ammo. I asked about hollow-point and soft-nose ammo, but I was told the Thompsons (and many other MGs and SMGs, and even some semi-auto pistols) tend to experience jams and feed problems with non-jacketed ammo.

Personally, my home-defense weapon-of-choice is a 12ga pump shotgun like the Mossberg 500. The ability to choose the type of load makes it particularly suited to home-defense.

I keep 2 rounds of birdshot first, followed up with buckshot for the remaining rounds. At ranges of 25 feet or less as within a typical home or apartment, it doesn't much matter if the shell is birdshot or a slug, it will still put a 2"-3" hole in a person. Birdshot is far less likely to over-penetrate and/or penetrate walls/floors/ceilings possibly causing collateral damage to innocent bystanders.

If I've fired 2 rounds of birdshot and going for more, I then figure I must be in a firefight so it's buckshot and all bets are off as I'm fighting for survival.

I know you're joking, but the truth is that a.22 round is more than capable of killing.

I can't find the reference at the moment, but I've seen statistics showing the.22LR as the cartridge that kills the most people annually in the US. It's not recommended as a self-defense round because it is less likely to result in a quick stop than heavier cartridges, and the fact that it's a rimfire makes it less reliable than centerfire rounds, but it kills people just fine.

If you believe that simply holding a functional weapon is a deterrent, your enemy probably isn't going to have time to inspect the details...

Since 95% of firearms self-defense incidents do not involve a shot being fired, not only is caliber unimportant, it usually doesn'

The range (20cm) is so short that keeping the gun ANYWHERE other than in your hand (such as a holster) means it needs the pin entered to work. The Heller decision already said that a nonfunctioning gun is not a gun for purposes of the second amendment, so thiere's a good chance this won't fly. Hint: read the part of the transcript where the DC attorney says that a disassembled gun is ok because the city won't prosecute for assembling the gun when faced by an intruder (which is wrong; the city HAS prosecut

Firearms manufacturing is one of the oldest forms of craft and art in the United States as is evident by Pennsylvania's recent push to honor the Pennsylvania long rifle as a storied part of their national history. Furthermore many involve masterful engineering and mechanics as well as providing a fun hobby to enjoy outdoors either in the form of casual target shooting or hunting.

Oh. You just wanted to register your arrogant distaste? I wont be so bold as to presume you're from a nation on another continent that bans ownership to its own citizens but happily exports them to nations around the world, but I will say you'd be surprised how much more understandable the interest is when they're a common and generally harmless part of your existence rather than an evil bogeyman.

I find this system to be completely intrusive and unnecessary, as an American.

No criminal record is acceptable, I suppose, though here in the US that bar seems to be getting lower and lower over time. When it was limited to felonies, and felonies were violent crimes, that was fine. But now it is expanded to white-collar crimes and domestic assault that results in a misdemeanor.

No failed psych eval makes sense, but again - that bar keeps getting lower too. I've heard tales of ex-military being denied a weapon because of a decade-old PTSD diagnosis. This only makes it less likely for them to seek treatment.

Safe storage? Fifth Amendment. No law enforcement officer will ever enter my home unless they have a warrant or are acting on an emergency.

Working knowledge of guns? How do you propose to measure this? Anyone who can read can have a "working knowledge of firearms and their use" in about 30 minutes. Sounds like an arbitrary test, to me. One that can be manipulated by whomever is responsible for administering it.

Over half of those would be suicides and they generally support the sometimes harmful nature of firearms. So would 12.5 Million registered hunters and the law abiding citizens in 1-2 Million "defensive gun uses" [guncite.com] every year.

For the 60 some million people (a rate that increases every year) owning over 200 million firearms 15,000 would be small even if it didn't include police shootings and intentional acts of self defense and is even less if you're cynical and feel that the another third or so shouldn't be counted because the victims were either committed by drug dealers or against them.

Guns are the great equalizers: swords and arrows require a heckuva lot more practice to become proficient than guns. It's no wonder governments are afraid of mere citizens having them. What is surprising is the number of ordinary people who have nothing to fear from guns but a lot to fear from governments who have somehow managed to swallow the government anti-gun propaganda. Think for yourself.

People using guns save far more lives and prevent far more crimes than do criminals using guns. Studies show anywhere from 1.5 million (by the gun hating CDC) to 2.5 million (by a gun loving professor) crimes prevented by the use of guns, usually no more than the criminal seeing it or hearing it, seldom by actually using it. Most gun crimes in the US are by criminals on criminals. Cars kill far more people.

Considering there are more guns in the US than cars, 300 million of them, one per citizen, they are used incredibly safely. Those who think guns are bad no doubt must think worse of cars.

And the most fun gun statistic in the US: if you have one neighbor with guns and one neighbor with a swimming pool, your kids are seven times as likely to die in the pool neighbor's pool than from the gun neighbor's guns.

freedomthe right and ability for self defensefreedomfreedomself defenseOH, did I mention FREEDOM?

You, wherever you are at, are not any more enlightened, civilized, or intelligent than anybody in the United States. If you do not believe that you have an inherent right to self defense, and the right to bear arms which is part and parcel of the right to self defense then I'd say that you are less intelligent, less enlightened, and are actually an uncivilizing force

Why do you need a fire extinguisher? Poorly maintained extinguishers are dangerous, and I can't think of one place that doesn't have a fire department. You can rely on them just as you expect everyone to rely on the police department.

Ever been to Detroit? There IS something very wrong with the society we live in. There's scores of places across America that are closer to shitholes in Africa than any first-world nation. Oh, sure, they might have a cell phone, and a 360 at their crib, and a nice car.. but functionally the values and attitudes are pretty in-line with what you'd find in some of the most awful places around the world.